Nintendo 64

The Nintendo 64 was released to the North American continent in 1997. This system also featured a 64-bit processor and was released initially in Japan in 1996. However, Europe and Australia would not see the Nintendo 64 until the end of 1997. When the Nintendo 64 was released, it came with either one of two different games. The first game was Super Mario 64, while the second game was Pilotwings 64.

The Nintendo 64 was a combined effort between Nintendo and Silicon Graphics. Also included with this effort, was the MIPS Technologies, who together designed the SGI-based system that would become known to the world as the Nintendo 64. The two companies worked together to create a low-cost CPU, however, a Sega hardware team inspected the chipset that was designed and determined that it would be inferior. This eventually led to SGI, along with Sega and Nintendo to create the final chipset for the Nintendo 64.

Originally code-named Project Reality, the Nintendo 64 game console was then later given the name the Nintendo Ultra 64. This system featured cartridge style play, much similar to most game consoles of the era. A week after its 1995 announcement, the magazine known as Nintendo Power, created a full article about the new Nintendo 64 before it was even released. These articles created quite a buzz and stir in the gaming industry and would also eventually lead to the ever excessive sales of the Nintendo 64 upon release.

During development several development companies were designing games for the Nintendo 64 which included the company Midway, which was a subsidiary of the Atari Corporation.

Only a few months before the official release of the Nintendo 64, the Ultra had to be removed from the name due to the fact that it was a trademark by the Konami Corporation under its Ultra Games division. This eventually led to the June 23^rd, 1996 release of the Nintendo 64, minus the Ultra in the name.

The system featured a CPU with a 93.75 MHz clock and a 32 bit data bus. The processor itself featured integrated floating point capabilities to create its first 64 bits of instruction. The CPU also featured a 32-bit cache, and was capable of 1 GB of bandwidth between the processor.

Depending on various codecs, the Nintendo 64 was also capable of playing various audio tracks. These audio tracks that the Nintendo 64 game consoles were capable of playing included MP3, MIDI, PCM, as well as Tracker music tracks.

The Nintendo 64 featured 4 MB of RDRAM that was capable of over 500 MHz of random access memory. This RAM was designed by Nintendo, in order to create a large amount of RAM bandwidth, while at the same time, keeping the cost lower.

The cartridges for the Nintendo 64 game console were 32 Mb each, however, some games featured a 64 Mb cartridge. Some games, like Resident Evil 2, were larger to allow for the excessive need of storage space. Some of these games also featured a battery backed RAM to allow you to save your game data without the need of utilising a separate memory card. Nintendo 64 also featured a brand-new design controller which beat the Sega Saturn's new analogue controller to the market by about a month.

In order to compensate for the new 64-bit game console, the Nintendo 64 feature a dual graphics system in which each graphic controller focused on a specific function. While these graphic processors were capable most of the time to run the sound for the game, it was still more efficient to set it up to allow the main processor to control the sound, so that the graphic processors were capable of focusing on the graphics themselves.

Overall, there were a lot of challenges in the development of the Nintendo 64, but by the time that the Nintendo 64 was released, it more than satisfied the video gaming industry. Although the standard versions of the Nintendo 64 featured a dark grey to an almost black colour, there were also several special releases such as the Donkey Kong 64's jungle green colour. There were also several specialised consuls in design in order to accommodate for games like the Legend of Zelda and Golden Eye 007. And just like the game console was released in several different specialised colours.

Nintendo 64 game cartridges contained a knockout chip; however, it did not take long to develop a bypass system in order to bypass the checksum of the booting of the individual Nintendo 64 games.

Nintendo 64 was to mark the last game console ever to utilise a cartridge rather than a disc. The reason for this was due to the fact that the cartridges featured a faster load time than a disk could manage due to the fact that at this time, the only optical devices available for game consoles were 4X.

The Nintendo 64 game cartridges were also more complex to copy than the disks, which would reduce the amount of piracy of the games. Nintendo had contemplated this for a short period of time before realising that the reduction in losses due to piracy, more than overcompensated for the lack of an optical device. The game cartridges were also capable of saving data on the actual game cartridge itself, whereas the disc could not. These game cartridges were also less susceptible to damage than any disk was capable of handling.

There had been several complaints, as well as heralds for the Nintendo 64 graphics. But of course, these results were a comparison to Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, which actually were not any competition due to the fact that the Saturn along with the Sony PlayStation utilised an optical device rather than a ROM cartridge.

The overall disadvantage for the Nintendo 64 would be the game cartridges themselves. Due to the fact that the other competing 64-bit game consuls utilised an optical device rather than a cartridge, Nintendo was unable to compete in the 64-bit market. However, due to the great number of fans of the Nintendo game consoles, the Nintendo 64 was still considered a big hit in the gaming industry. In 2001, the Nintendo Corporation would replace the Nintendo 64 with their new disc-based Nintendo Game Cube system.

Much like most of the Nintendo game consoles, the Nintendo 64 also featured the Game Shark cheat cartridge that would go in between the console itself and the game. This cheat cartridge would allow you to put in special codes to allow you extra levels, as well as become invincible throughout the game.